I have to admit that I haven’t heard that much regarding the dreaded “robocalls” before this election.  They seem to be getting a little less attention in the media as we enter the last weekend before THE ELECTION.  I think the following video sums up my feelings on automated calls.

There are many reasons to vote. Make sure your voice is heard.

Why didn’t we see this coming? It’s another example of how Caribou Barbie is just like every other normal Joe Six-Pack in the country.  It looks like the highest paid member of the McCain campaign is Sarah Palin’s makeup artist. Makeup artist?

Ms. Strozzi, who was nominated for an Emmy award for her makeup work on the television show “So You Think You Can Dance?”, was paid $22,800 for the first two weeks of October alone, according to the records. The campaign categorized Ms. Strozzi’s payment as “PERSONNEL SVC/EQUIPMENT.”

The payment on Oct. 10 made Ms. Strozzi the single highest-paid individual in the campaign for that two-week period. (There were more than two dozen companies that got larger payments than Ms. Strozzi). She easily beat out Mr. Scheunemann, who received $12,500 in the first half of October, and Ms. Wallace, who got $12,000.

If Sarah Pain is so pretty and has all this “experience” as a beauty contestant, why does she even need makeup?

I’ve written before about the gross hypocrisy in portraying Sarah Palin as anything close to an average American. The money she and her husband makes and her job simply remove her from consideration. How can you consider the governor of a state the same as an ordinary working class citizen. By definition, as a governor you are part of the ruling class. And now surprise! Palin has spent more than what I make in FIVE YEARS on clothes.

Yet Republicans expressed consternation publicly and privately that
the shopping sprees on her behalf, which were first reported by
Politico, would compromise Ms. Palin’s standing as Senator McCain’s
chief emissary to working-class voters whose salvos at the so-called
cultural elite often delight audiences at Republican rallies.

That possibility was brought to life, for instance, on “The View” on ABC, as Joy Behar, a co-host, noted the McCain campaign’s outreach to blue-collar workers — like an Ohio plumber who recently chided Senator Barack Obama over taxes — after another co-host, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, defended the expenditures.

“I don’t think Joe the Plumber wears Manolo Blahniks,” Ms. Behar said.

The argument from Republicans is that Palin needs to look good and if she didn’t, the press would criticize her for it. They could have turned this to her advantage if they had purchased clothes at Wal-Mart or Sears. The Republicans, who were a formidable political force just a few year’s ago, are now so out of touch with real Americans that it’s no surprise that Democrats will be sweeping them out of the White House, the Congress and the Senate in just 12 days.

I can’t put my finger on it but I just have this feeling that this whole bailout thing is simply a poorly conceived and executed plan to provide political cover for our so-called leaders. And to especially help Bush leave office in less disgrace than he will already.

Is there a true economic crisis? Especially of the magnitude that’s been reported. The economy’s been in trouble for quite a while already. Here’s an excerpt of a minnpost.com report from a panel of economists at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs Tuesday night:

The Bush administration has acted in this crisis the same as it has acted for the last eight years, Chari said. “The consistent message is: We’re grown-ups. We understand the real problems. You don’t. We need to go into Iraq. We need to spend $720 billion. Because we have the information that you don’t.”

The publicly available data don’t support the need for the type of bailout bill pushed by the president, Chari said, and if the administration has more telling data, it should be disclosed. Without seeing what they’re seeing, the bailout appears to be “remarkably unwise,” he said.

“They’re not telling us what we’re not seeing that they are seeing,” Chari said. “There is this nagging fear maybe they’re reacting to weird things in their heads.”

Stinson acknowledge the problem that many people believe they are being misled, but said he believes the threat to the economy is credible.

“This isn’t Mr. [Ahmed] Chalabi reporting visions of mobile bio weapons labs running around the streets of Baghdad,” Stinson said of a key figure in the run-up to the Iraq war in gathering information that turned out to be false.

Instead of a grainy satellite image in a Colin Powell slide show, what economists are seeing is a widening gap in the rate banks are charging each other compared to what the Federal Reserve charges.

Something’s fishy about this “bailout”. Time will tell whether the administraton’s response was warrented or whether it was just a “let’s cover our ass” move. People don’t trust the Bush administration’s version of the “crisis”. Well, I have no idea why that would occur?

The final debate is over and it appears, by all objective measures, that Obama won. I can say now with some certainty that McCain will be losing the election.  I’m starting to feel a little sorry for McCain.  I think that history and other cultural factors have simply made this Obama’s time. E.J. Dionne Jr. said in the Washington Post: 

What’s striking about the past month is that the great American middle has shifted Obama’s way. Recent polls by The Post and ABC News, Gallup, and the Pew Research Center suggest that Obama’s gains since mid-September have been especially large among whites, particularly white men, and also among independents and moderates. At this crucial juncture, the contours of the 2008 contest are remarkably similar to those of the 2006 midterm elections that ended with a Democratic victory. Strikingly — and no doubt unintentionally — McCain echoed the Democrats’ 2006 campaign theme when he said that voters want the country to move in “a new direction.” That’s McCain’s problem.

McCain had a chance in 2000 to be the party’s nominee and he lost to Bush. The 2008 McCain is a much different man. Since 2000, his attitude has seemed to be “wait my turn and win at any cost”.  Unfortunately, McCain is no longer a maverick — he changed for the worse.